I'm not admitting how many Mother's Days I've known as an offspring, but I will admit to being on the business end of 21. Twenty-one years of half-hoping they wouldn't bother and feigning delight and surprise when they did.
The early years were great - endearing little crayoned efforts on the fridge door with me depicted wearing a triangular skirt, curled-up hair and a broad grin. (Very much playschool influenced - I'm a jeans and jumper type).
I 've kept those masterpieces over the years - I do have some vestige of sentimentality left. I didn't mind the times when they coerced their father into a run to the nearest late-night petrol station for droopy, last-minute flowers.
It was when Mother's Day progressed to wringing the last out of their little pockets to buy me a gaudy plate with "Mother" daubed across it in gold that I started opting out. And they never called me Mother in their life: Mum is as formal as they get and it's more often just plain Ma.
I've long since believed that Mother's Day is yet another of the manufactured feasts designed to extract the last tuppence from the most impecunious piggy-bank lest they should be accused, God forbid, of not caring. I've always put it in the same category as Valentine's Day and the modern-day Christmas. My own mother has suffered for my cynicism, as I think for years she has been lucky to get as much as a phone call on the day in question - probably since I progressed beyond the home-made card stage with the "y" of Mammy written backwards.
Change of heart
Why then, did I almost have a change of heart this year? Well, I'm still a Mammy - my children haven't gone the American way of divorcing me just yet - but I'm feeling a bit redundant. Neither of my offspring lives at home any more. Himself and myself are on our own again after nearly 22 years and we feel like two peas rattling around in a jamjar. We have our space back and, so far, we don't really know what to do with it. No. 1 is still living close by and we've probably seen more of her since she moved out than we did when she lived at home; but, she has, technically, flown the nest. No. 2 is in Scotland and might well stay there for the duration of her college holidays. Our household has changed, changed utterly and we find ourselves waiting for our terrible beauties' visits with the sense of anticipation normally afforded to favourite guests.
Winning the bathroom back isn't the huge deal we thought it would be and making mashed spuds for one of them and leaving them whole for the other is now a labour of love rather than the minor inconvenience it once was. It's difficult, too, to listen to silence. When stereos were cranking out a constant thump thump, I craved a tranquil island and when long evenings were spent arguing the toss about body-piercing and tattoos, I'd gleefully have wrung their necks. (Mind you, I won the piercing and tattoo round - I threatened and meant it that I'd match them stud for stud, tattoo for tattoo. The mental image of their Ma with a nose-ring, tongue-stud and a barbed-wire detail on her decidedly ample midriff was definite "let's not go there" territory.) But such is the stuff that family life is made of; and then, your children, who have made you share all this, leave. You feel a bit strange. And lost. And old.
Commercial schmaltz
So, approaching this Mother's Day, I found myself getting uncharacteristically sentimental and wistful and frightened myself when I started thinking typical Irish Mammy thoughts: "Wisha, they're gone from me now", etc. Suddenly, the commercial schmaltz on the Mother's Day cards didn't seem so bad. Maybe wee Daniel and his Mammy is the level of devotion we should all aspire to? Maybe Mother's Day ain't so bad after all? I decided to look for some history - something solid and sensible. Something that would allow me to change my mind and save face.
I logged on to the Web and surfed my way through a surprisingly large number of sites dedicated to Mother's Day - mostly American but some European. The result? If it's possible, I'm more cynical than ever and am thinking of mounting a one-person protest at my local shopping centre - I'll straddle the greeting card area and the chocolate box stand and my placard will say something like, "Save your money - go home and clean your room or do the ironing. That'll show her you really care". (Big placard, huh?)
The commercialism and guilt-tripping is unbelievable. Site after site is dripping with syrupy verse designed to make the most wayward offspring gulp down the lump in their throat and head straight for the credit card to phone-a-flower. Indeed, one needn't leave the computer - the verse invariably leads to a link where one can order up any number of deliverable-to-your-Mammy's-door delights.
I did find one site that I thought might save me. It gave a good deal of historical information - it told me about Rhea, the mother of all the Greek gods; the Romans too, apparently, had a Magna Mater who was honoured every March on the Palatine Hill and then, after the dawn of Christianity, "Mother Church" was honoured on the fourth Sunday of Lent. In the Middle Ages, apparently, "Mothering Sunday" came about when children, forced to work away from home, got one day off in the year to visit their mothers. Good solid stuff, this. I read on.
Woodrow Wilson
In America, a woman called Anna Jarvis is considered to be the founder of their Mother's Day. Her mother, it seems, thought that a national day of honouring mothers would stop fighting and hatred (she had survived the Civil War) and young Anna took it upon herself to advance this idea. On May 9th, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation declaring the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day in every state.
Just as I was getting comfortable with this site and almost waving my flag for Mother's Day, there it was: don't forget your Magna Mater. . .for $44.95 you can send your special gift. . .
So, no change of heart, I'm afraid. I was right all along. But I will ring my own Ma on the day to say hello. I might even relent and pop a card in the post. And I will select a masterpiece to hang on the fridge again - I really miss my triangular skirt.